The Worst Films of 2008

[Phil]

I promise not to copy/paste everything from The AV Club, but the sequels discussion it kicked up here was pretty good, and I thought there might be some interest in their worst films list.

http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/there_appears_to_be_an_event

You might notice that despite my assurance in the other thread that the numbers attached to films aren’t rankings, this time they are presented in descending order, which DOES suggest that the list is working from least-bad to worst. So…who the hell knows.

Also, I wanted to see at least two of these films. Maybe I still will. There’s often value in seeing a bad documentary, after all…just not much of it.

17. Smart People
16. Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull
15. The Eye
14. Soul Men
13. Nobel Son
12. The Life Before Her Eyes
11. Chapter 27
10. Religulous
9. Good Dick
8. In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
7. Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden?
6. Fireproof
5. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
4. Meet Dave
3. The Hottie And The Nottie
2. The Happening
1. The Dark Knight

Topic

[TheLeen]

Well, The Happening was kind of shit. But The Dark Knight was not. To see the two titles next to each other… it just looks insane.

[Tarka Dal]

Well clearly it’s wrong about TDK.

As a huge M. Night Shyalaman fan ‘The Happening’ was pretty dissapointing. His worst film yet. I expect Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to feature heavily in this thread, which I actually enjoyed. So worst film of the year…

Runners-up: The Spiderwick Chronicles

Winner: The Day the Earth Stood Still

Best Films:
The Dark Knight
RedBelt

[TheLeen]

> I expect Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to feature heavily in this thread, which I actually enjoyed.

Yep, me too.

[Phil]

The worst (in terms of “least enjoyable”) film I saw was Burn After Reading, but that was still a capable and for the most part well-acted film…it just didn’t get where it was trying to go.

I have a pretty good track record in terms of determining whether or not a film will appeal to me long before I shell out money for it, so it’s rare that I leave a theater thoroughly disappointed.

From what I’ve read, though, I can understand exactly why Religulous and its right-wing counterpart Expelled are featuring on this list. Both sides of the debate would benefit from an intelligent and entertaining (that’s “and,” not “or”) perspective-piece…but these are not those pieces.

[Andrew]

TDK’s a ‘joke’ right? The link has Witless Protection as number one.

The Happening was woeful, and such a shame when I’m happy to find stuff to enjoy even in Lady In the Water. And my stance on Indy 4 remains as before – I literally didn’t care what happened at ANY point, which is impossibly rare for me. Though I’m even more disgusted by the fact that, sooner or later, I’ll pick it up on DVD for a second look…

[Phil]

>TDK?s a ?joke? right?

Oh come on…it was good enough not to deserve the inverted commas! :-)

[Tarka Dal]

Does LITW have a bad reputation? I’ve never really dug into it too far. I recently watched it for the first time since I saw it at the cinema and enjoyed it just as much this time round.

[Jonathan Capps]

> Winner: The Day the Earth Stood Still

O RLY? I’ve been looking forward to seeing this… is it jobbies?

[Phil]

>I?ve been looking forward to seeing this?

Quite how you even got that far I’ll never know.

[Jonathan Capps]

Empire told me to :(

[Andrew]

> Oh come on?it was good enough not to deserve the inverted commas! :-)

Truth is, people believed you because…well, because it could happen. Anyone who doesn’t follow the link figures ‘hey, a group of TDK-hating fanboys making a point’. Not the first time ‘I didn’t like it’ got exaggerated to ‘worst ever’ by dint of its popularity.

> O RLY? I?ve been looking forward to seeing this? is it jobbies?

It’s not jobbies!

I mean, it’s not spectacular, but it’s competent, and occasionally inventive. (The manner in which Keanuklaatu emerges on Earth is neat.)

[Phil]

>Truth is, people believed you because?well, because it could happen.

And by reacting before following a link to read the rationale behind the claim they missed the joke. (Which is exactly the sort of thing that happens on Wikipedia constantly.) The difference is I intended to reveal it in a short while if nobody was clicking through, and we could all get a chuckle ho ho ho.

Sorry you think my “joke” needs to be propped up on both sides by punctuation, but there was no malice intended…and was there a better movie than The Dark Knight to put there to get the head-scratching started?

[Mr Flibble]

Spiderwick wasn’t that bad, although I did see it in IMAX. Indiana Jones was stupid, but quite good. The Happening was awful indeed. Smart People had a few seconds that redeemed it, but it was very slow. Like Sideways, which shared the same producer.

[Andrew]

> Sorry you think my ?joke? needs to be propped up on both sides by punctuation

Wow, okay, I wasn’t trying to start a big argument about it!

[Phil]

Neither was I, I was just baffled by your seemingly irritated dismissal and responded with a jokey smiley, and around and around we go, just as we’ve gone a half-dozen times before.

Skip to the end: neither of us really cares.

[hummingbird]

Haven’t seen half of the films on that list (thank gods) so difficult to comment.

I work at erasing the worst movies from my memory completely. I find it’s better that way.

Best movie: In Bruges

[Jonathan Capps]

I would pay money to see Phil and Andrew partake in rough sex.

[Andrew]

Not that I’m agreeing to anything but…how much money are we talking about here?

[peas_and_corn]

X Files 2 should have been there.

[Jonathan Capps]

> Not that I?m agreeing to anything but?how much money are we talking about here?

It’s got a 6 in it, but it’s not 6,000.

[pfm]

> Spiderwick wasn?t that bad

Yes it was.

Oh it was.

I still can’t get over how bad it is actually. It’s worth watching though for that reason, unlike The Happening and that Dungeon Siege movie which I wouldn’t recommend to an enemy.

Spiderwick at least has a couple of things going for it – e.g. the all-American ‘daddy doesn’t love me’ thing (he knows this because he doesn’t get a text back from him, or something like that anyway, it’s seriously on that level) resulting in him knowing that his ‘dad’ who comes through the door at the end is fake because he never would have said ‘I love you’. This resulting in him stabbing his ‘dad’, this working on two levels, 1) he stabs the bad guy and 2) it’s ‘symbolic’ because stabbing his dad is what he needs to do to get over his daddy issues. (I mean FFS the writer of this obviously has more daddy issues than the whole of the Lost writing team put together!)

Also, the complete madness of the old woman being locked up in a home all her life because they thought she had been self-harming (this is a kids film, please note) when in fact it was cuts from when the goblins had got her. When she rolled up her sleeve to show what clearly does look like self-harm scars I was beginning to question my sanity.

What am I saying? How dare I slate it? It’s the American Harry Potter, for crying out loud!! I mean, we know this because it includes a scene where they ride to someone’s rescue on the back of a half bird-half horse creature (a hippogriff. oh wait it’s not called that here…). Also the hero is a pale, dark-haired 12-year-old boy so how could it NOT be Harry Potter? It reminds me of all the terrible Star Wars ripoffs that got made in the ’80s, like Return of the Jedi for instance. The posters and trailer screaming ‘COME AND SEE THIS IT’S LIKE STAR WARS AND EVERYTHING WITH LOADS OF CREATURES, LASERS, SHIPS AND STUFF’

[Andrew]

I thought Spiderwick had some of that old 80s Spielberg-produced quality – a quality that the Potter movies have lacked. Imperfect, but certainly more enjoyable than…well, Potters 1 and 2 for a start.

[Mr Flibble]

Well, perhaps Spiderwick was the “IMAX” effect. Also, if there were differences between the UK and the US/Canadian version, I’d have seen the latter one.

[Tarka Dal]

The Day the Earth Stood Still

> I mean, it?s not spectacular, but it?s competent, and occasionally inventive. (The manner in which Keanuklaatu emerges on Earth is neat.)

Actually fair point that bit was quite creative. The rest though was pretty turgid. Keanu was the best thing in it. His deadpan style obviously leant itself very well to the lead role. Most of it however just seemed second-rate. The FX looked okay, but for me lacked any magic. The characters, apart from maybe Cleese’s cameo, lacked any sparkle and the way humanity’s choice was mirrored in the feelings of the doctor’s son had all the subtletly of concrete being run over by a 10-tonne truck. Grr. I think I found my equivilant to Andrew’s KOTC review with this one.

Spiderwick Chronicles

I can’t remember much now. I did actually enjoy bits of it. I’ll go and see more or less any live-action fairytale that comes out, but both Inkheart and Prince Caspian were far superior. What really let Spiderwick Chronicles down for me was the acting. The kids, who thankfully were the man focus were fine. Whereas as every adult given a line seemed in contention to see who could either ham it up or be the most wooden.

X-Files 2

God yes! I’d forgotten entirely about seeing this one. Arguably worse than either of those above. It wasn’t anything more than an average X-Files episode stretched to feature length and 15 years too late.

[Andrew]

> Keanu was the best thing in it.

As an actor who struggles to be credible as a human being, he’s pretty much found his niche.

I liked Gort, too.

[Joey TORDFC]

Didn’t mind The Hottie and the Nottie. Nothing bad about it, it was just the same as all the rest of those teen feel-good movies.

[Phil]

In the spirit of balance, here’s their top 10, averaged out from individual lists of favorites that you can also read, if you like:

http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/the_year_in_film_2008

10. Surfwise (dir. Doug Pray)
9. Wendy And Lucy (dir. Kelly Reichardt)
8. Man On Wire (dir. James Marsh)
7. 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days (dir. Cristian Mungiu)
6. Paranoid Park (dir. Gus Van Sant)
5. Milk (dir. Gus Van Sant)
4. The Dark Knight (dir. Christopher Nolan)
3. Synecdoche, New York (dir. Charlie Kaufman)
2. Rachel Getting Married (dir. Jonathan Demme)
1. WALL-E (dir. Andrew Stanton)

I’ve only seen two of these, I confess…but I wanted to see a few more. (I’m kicking myself over not going to see Synecdoche during the whole day and a half it was available in my local theater.) Reading the descriptions makes me want to see even the ones I hadn’t heard about.

Guess it wasn’t such a bad year for film after all.

[Tarka Dal]

> I liked Gort, too.

Did the name Gort stand for anything in the original or was that just something they threw in for the re-make?

Andrew, what did you make of War of the Worlds. I really liked the way it played blending the creepyness of the original into a contempary setting. I was hoping that TDTESS would play-out something similar, but it didn’t for me. It just felt like a very ordinary sci-fi movie.

My own favourite bit was when Klatu is speaking Japanese. People in the cinema were actually laughing out loud.

[Andrew]

> Did the name Gort stand for anything in the original or was that just something they threw in for the re-make?

It was the robot’s actual name. I liked the acronym – as with Klaatu Barada Nikto it seemed fairly gently woven in. A nod rather than a sledgehammer.

I agree about the film feeling ordinary. But I’ll take ordinary over offensively bad.

> Andrew, what did you make of War of the Worlds.

I love. Love it, love it. I can’t name two other films from the last decade that have made me feel such palpable fear in the cinema. The book’s sense of ‘No, seriously, there is NOTHING we can do but run and wait to die’ just flies off the screen.

It feel real old-Spielberg, too – with technically impressive and utterly gripping sequences all the way through. Pretend it’s not ‘that’ Tom Cruise (and ignore a couple of, erm, logic issues) and it’s one of my favourites of recent years.

[pfm]

WotW would have been good with an extra 20 minutes at the end replacing the lame way his son just reappears AND how Boston is untouched by the aliens. I like the way it ends – it’s the only way it should EVER end – but you really feel how rushed the production was (something like 6 months from start of shooting to release is just too short for a CG-laden blockbuster of this size!). But YES there are some fantastic sequences within and Spielberg waved his old-style wand on the ‘family’ scenes with Cruise and kids. And the shorter length WAS refreshing after the over-long Minority Report and A.I.

[TheLeen]

Okay, I’ve *just* seen The Day the Earth stood still, and I can confirm that it’s not really worth the cinema visit. Rent the DVD if you must.

Some eye candy, some lengths, also some nice bits, but nothing spectacular. Klaatu barada nikto was sweet, Gort was good. Keanu Reeves managed to not stink COMPLETELY. I was not impressed by Jaden Smith. John Cleese did very little. The rest was not worth mentioning.

> My own favourite bit was when Klatu is speaking Japanese. People in the cinema were actually laughing out loud.

They would have if they expected Japanese. Klaatu was speaking Chinese :P (Mandarin)

[ChrisM]

>Klaatu barada nikto

So that’s where that phrase originates. (The original tale I mean.) I remember the words from Army of Darkness (although I heard the second word as ‘verata’ but that’s likely my mishearing…)

“Klaatuuuu barada nic- heurgh!
That’s it! I’ve said the words…”

Great, very silly scene.

[Tarka Dal]

> They would have if they expected Japanese. Klaatu was speaking Chinese :P (Mandarin)

“I don’t speak Mandarin…”

Either way it still came across unintentionally hilarious.

[Seb Patrick]

On TDTESS, I think I agree with Andrew. It’s not spectacularly entertaining, but it’s a well-made, slightly po-faced and dry piece of contemplative sci-fi. It could have done with delving a bit more into Klaatu’s reasons for being there, and ramped up the philosophy a bit. But there were nice touches – I thought Gort was an excellent bit of reimagining, even with the blatant Cylon influence.

Also : Will Smith’s kid can actually act.

It’s not really The Day The Earth Stood Still, though. It’s more The Day The Earth Ran Around Waving Its Hands And Going “Aaaah!”

[Seb Patrick]

Also – any list of the “worst films of the year” that includes big Hollywood blockbusters that are at least made by people with strong levels of technical proficiency (even if the writers and directors and actors were all shit) is talking out of its arse, because it doesn’t take into account all the low-budget straight-to-DVD shite that nobody ever sees.

*cough*Roswell1859*cough*

[Andrew]

> It could have done with delving a bit more into Klaatu?s reasons for being there

I think there’s a trick being missed with Klaatu, as well, in that he’s been placed inside this human body – and with that could, in theory, come human brain chemistry. The unfamiliar emotional experiences that might force upon him might be very interesting…and make the choice at the end even more uncertain. (Was saving humanity a good idea? Or was he just sentimental)

The beginnings of my remake, there. Look to your multiplex in 2032.

[Phil]

>*cough*Roswell1859*cough*

There’s a sequel to Roswell 1847!?

[Tarka Dal]

> Also : Will Smith?s kid can actually act.

He can? Oh well we’ll just have to chalk this one down to experience.

[Seb Patrick]

>There?s a sequel to Roswell 1847!?

Shush, you. I couldn’t remember, and couldn’t be arsed searching.

[Phil]

>I couldn?t remember, and couldn?t be arsed searching.

Two things that make you a much luckier man than me. :-)

[Author]

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